Planning & Promotion

Dear Organizers, Here’s How To Ace Event Lead Management in 2022

Eventually Learning Team

“Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” – Bruce Springsteen

The event universe or the ‘eventiverse’ as we like to call it, is still gushing over the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that happened in January 2022 in Las Vegas! Can you fathom the opportunities for lead generation at CES 2022, with over 40,000 attendees turning up at the event?

As we close the first quarter of the year and venture into a new one, it’s time for event professionals to evaluate their event lead management strategies for events and tradeshows. More than 68% of B2B marketers pivot to in-person events for lead generation, and it’s time to learn how you can effectively nurture the leads pipeline through events.
 

Is Your Event Lead Retrieval System Still Relevant?

There are multiple avenues a prospect can choose while attending your tradeshow.  Consequentially, you should be ready with a sales outreach plan that includes educating the lead on the value proposition while assessing them further for purchase intent and their ability to pay for your service. Often, organizers prefer using event lead retrieval systems to enhance lead capture and storage. However, if you switch between different platforms for lead capture at your events, the end product is Data Decay! It is highly likely that the data you send to your sales and marketing team will be inaccurate, outdated or from unreliable sources.

Prevalent challenges of using multiple event lead capture solutions are:

  • Missing data fields
  • Discrepancies in data make it challenging to import existing information into a CRM
  • Usage of different styles and formats enervates the Sales Development Representatives while modifying data
  • Loss of data capture in lead qualification surveys
  • Lost revenue generation opportunities because the lead generation team is forced to put up with a list of unqualified prospects

When your sales representatives knock on the wrong door or lose out on urgent leads that need closing, they will become unmotivated! So ensure that you focus on quality and not quantity to give your team a list of ‘Sales Ready’ prospects.

Lay Out the Welcome Mat for the Latest Event Lead Management System

Technology is the sole reason event professionals can capture leads in virtual and hybrid events. Having a single lead management tool like InEvent helps you create a distinguished database for attendees, invitees, guests, delegates, sponsors and speakers. In addition, intelligent automation enables seamless integration of the captured data with your CRM, making it easier for the organizer to communicate and connect with specific accounts.

One tested method that can easily be called the rising star of data capture at events is Salesforce’s ‘Bulk Scanning’ feature, launched in June 2021. If you are an exhibitor, using the Bulk Scan feature will aid you in scanning multiple business cards in a sequence that can be digitized in batches. The data can immediately be transferred to your Salesforce account for Account-Based Marketing and generating personalized communication strategies.

For example, you can ask your event sales reps and vendors at booths to download the Scan to Salesforce app. It can easily erase the bottleneck of manual entry and allow your representatives to import contacts to your CRM when they get scanned at the booth!

How Does a Lead Management System Assist Your Team?

If event organizers are using a lead management system, it concludes different results for the other members of the team. The best way to decode, simplify, and share data is to let your team members access the platform simultaneously.

For example, the marketing reps in your team can immediately start learning more about the captured leads to prepare the best-fit marketing and communication strategies to woo prospects visiting their booth. The sales managers can seamlessly allot leads to their teams and ensure no lead falls through the crack. Finally, the administrators at your event play a pivotal role in ensuring that the right lead lands in the account of the right expert!

Pro tip: To boost your sales pipeline, try one-on-one personalized marketing tactics with account-based marketing at the event venue. Use leads captured at the booths and leverage the ‘Commitment Bias’ in the case of attendees to close deals. The Commitment Bias means attendees are more likely to buy your product because of the time and money they have invested in attending your event!

Acquiring Quality Leads Can Be a Smooth Sailing Process

It’s easier to manage the event sales funnel if you can answer, “Am I generating revenue through quality leads from my event?” Then, when you clarify meaningful hidden structures in the captured lead data, you can determine if the leads are hot or cold! But first, let’s understand how you can grab quality leads at an event.
  • Source a platform that enables you to create custom fields to the readymade templates for data capture
  • Implement solutions that provide cross event metrics and analytics to understand which event performed better
  • Leverage a system that allows 1D, 2D barcodes and RFID badge scanning to capture real-time leads at tradeshow booths
  • Make sure your lead management solutions give a measurable ROI and enable you to input more than just contact information
  • Try implementing solutions that are capable of integrating real-time analytics with your CRM platform simultaneously
  • The need of the hour is to ensure you can integrate behavioral data with BANT (budget, authority, needs and timeline) data to plan the relevant course of action.

Final Words

Sales representatives are always under the pump to formulate marketing strategies and convert leads into customers at tradeshows and events! As an event organizer, you have to corroborate your lead generation reps with vital prospect data to enhance conversions for a profitable event ROI. Use the right tactics and lead management platforms that help SDRs immediately segregate prospects that are highly likely to generate revenue.

Focus on Quality!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the five major stages of lead management at events?

A successful lead management process has the five stages mentioned below:
  1. Lead capturing
  2. Lead enrichment and tracking
  3. Lead qualification
  4. Lead distribution into the right accounts
  5. Lead nurturing

How to maximize conversions from events?

The steps that will help you enhance your event sales funnel are:
  • Set up meetings during the day of the event
  • Don’t go for essay-long sales pitches! Just try explaining how the product works
  • Strictly avoid any hard-selling of products! Instead, use your objection handling playbook to counter prospect suspicions like lack of trust, budget or authority
  • Try replying instantly to messages or emails after the initial meeting
  • Design out-of-the-box networking rooms to encourage attendee footfall for meetings

What are some lead capture tools for tradeshows?

The best lead capture tools for tradeshows are as follows:
  • Cvent Lead Capture
  • Social Tables
  • ICapture
  • CompuSystems
  • Attendify
  • VCapture.

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